I think for most of my life, I’ve held strong in my belief that the majority of people have more goodness within them to give to the world and to others than they do evil. In spite of everything I have endured over the course of the last few months, I think I still believe this. I have felt enough souls in my life to know that warmth and compassion and love are the true colors of humanity. Though I have only been fortunate enough to have experienced such positive qualities firsthand from a single other person, knowing that most people are sincerely good fills me with hope and leaves me envious of the rest of you. I am crestfallen by the knowledge that I truly have nothing positive, or of worth, to give back to others. My light has been taken from me, and I am no longer one of the majority.
This is not an admission of guilt, but an explanation of intent. People will think that I’m a monster for what I’m about to do. I believe I am; but rest assured, the person I am going to do it to is a million times worse than me. I do not believe there is any chance I can get away with this, so I want my accounting of the events leading up to this crime to be publicly available. This won’t absolve me, morally nor legally, but maybe at least a few people will be convinced to not write me off completely as a human being. Maybe someday, if ever they let me out, I can find the colors of humanity in myself once more. I really hope so.
I was born with a soul too big for my body. To be specific, my soul extends about five-to-six feet out from me in all directions; up, down, and all around. Imagine it like a big metaphysical globe with my head at the center of it. Now, it’s probably a reasonable assumption that nobody who reads this (who hasn’t already discarded it as the manifesto of a madwoman) will have any idea what I’m talking about. That’s okay, I’ll do my best to explain.
Every person has a soul; the incorporeal summation of their thoughts, experiences, memories, values and interests. Put more simply, your consciousness. Described even simpler than that, your you. It exists in the very center of your brain, immaterial of the spongey gray matter around it, yet tied from it inseparably. For the vast majority of people, it’s about as big as a marble. Sometimes smaller, sometimes a smidge bigger. The largest soul I’ve ever felt was about the size of a superball. Mine is an exercise ball, quintupled.
But what, I imagine you’re asking, does this mean exactly? Well, your soul is supposed to exist fully within your own mind for a reason: It limits the breadth of your experience down to only the senses of your body. Your soul isn’t supposed to come in contact with anything outside of you. If it’s everything you experience, you will experience everything it touches; including other souls.
When Momma was pregnant with me, everything seemed to be going well at first. When the ultrasound technician told my parents they were going to have a little girl, they were elated. Of course, they would have loved me no matter who I would’ve been, but the two of them had both been hoping their first would be a daughter. Momma had a lot of precious childhood things she’d been hoping to pass down to me, and Daddy wanted the experience of being a strong protector for his little princess. Things seemed to be going better than they could have dreamed.
Shortly after the start of the third trimester, my soul formed, and the illusion of their perfect pregnancy was shattered. My mother woke up from a good dream turned sour, as her mind was filled with static and abstract shapes… my developing brain’s earliest semblance of thoughts. In addition, she could literally feel everything in the room around her. She felt my soul, and my soul felt as far as it extended.
My father, upon waking up, realized he felt the same way she did; but when he got up and left the room in a rush to call 911, it stopped. For him, at least. My mother kept screaming from the bedroom as she non-consensually sponged up the world around her. For me, it would’ve been normal: the first stages of experience. For her, it would have been hellish: living a whole life knowing only that which her body experienced, to suddenly wake up feeling everything around her all at once. I was the metaphysical jumper cable, hooking her senses up to the car-battery of the world. Through an inseparable proximity to me, she experienced reality times a thousand.
She was rushed to the hospital via ambulance; the EMT’s in the back themselves experiencing the same experiential terrors she was. All medical experts who examined her had no idea what was happening; but none of them had made the conclusion that it had anything to do with me. Why would they? All they could deduce was that walking too close to her seemed to cause an intense absorption of all possible stimuli in the immediate: Nothing about that inherently suggested I was the cause. In fact, though her vitals were constantly elevated and they had to sedate her to sleep every night for the duration of her stay, the pregnancy itself seemed completely normal. I seemed completely normal.
Momma remained hospitalized, all the way up to giving birth to me. As I came into the world, she and the medical staff on hand had to work through my experience of exiting the birth canal and seeing the confusing world with my own eyes for the first time. All at once, the truth was illuminated; I had been the cause the whole time.
I was held in the hospital for close to a week, as all sorts of tests were ran on me to evaluate the state of my health. I was given a CT scan and hooked up to an EEG to try to find any abnormalities in my body that could be the source of my condition. Eventually they accepted that I was a normal, healthy baby girl, who standing next to happened to cause one to feel the world in a way they otherwise wouldn’t. I didn’t seem to be in any sort of discomfort myself, so reluctantly, the doctors in the pediatric ward agreed to allow me to be discharged.
I was taken home by ambulance. The nurse in the back hurriedly passed me off to the arms of my daddy, who hurriedly laid me down in my crib. He only came into my room periodically to change my diapers, and to feed me baby formula from a bottle. Momma wanted nothing to do with me for a very long time; the time she had spent unable to escape the reach of my soul had been one of the most traumatic periods of her life. I don’t blame her, but throughout my childhood, she was never very affectionate to me.
Neither of my parents ever could stand very close to me for very long. Our dinner table was almost comically too big for our dining room; with them sitting on one end and me all the way over on the other. They would take care of me, but from a distance. It didn’t take me long to learn that I wasn’t supposed to get too close to them. I wanted to, I craved deeper interaction with my parents in the way all children do. Nonetheless, I just sort of accepted that things were as things were, and that was that. I didn’t have any reason to believe that our relationship was in some way abnormal; it was just how I’d always known the world to be.
I was homeschooled to the best of my parents’ abilities until fourth grade. They were trying to keep me away from other kids and teachers, but eventually it became too much for them to handle, and they realized the quality of my education wasn’t sufficiently what I’d need to succeed in life. They enrolled me in the district’s elementary school, where I began my educational career of being avoided by everyone in all my classes. I was usually sat alone, in the back corner of the room, where my soul couldn’t reach the next nearest student. I guess it could’ve been worse. Nobody ever bullied me. Everyone pretended I didn’t exist.
I don’t have many memorable interactions with any of my peers, to be honest. There is this one time that stands out in my mind as clearly to me now as when it happened: I had arrived to class late and a group of three girls were talking about me, thinking that I was out sick for the day. I didn’t hear the start of the conversation.
“-like Chloe, or whatever?”
“CHLOE!” One of them said in an exaggerated, mocking tone. “That bitch is a fucking cold-spot in every room she enters. It’s better when she’s out sick. We can walk around the classroom normally without having to avoid the area near the sink.”
The third girl looked past them and saw me standing there, her face going pale. The other two caught her gaze and turned to face me. We stared at each other in silence for several seconds, before I quietly took my seat. I made sure to pass right by their group so all three of them were forced to feel the tears I was holding back.
Mostly though, my time in school was uneventful. I distracted myself from loneliness by throwing myself into podcasts and video games. They gave me some semblance of simulated interaction with others. It wasn’t until I was older, at about my early twenties, that I started critically evaluating my life and realized all the normal experiences I’d been deprived of. Watching TV on the couch together as a family. Being tucked in to bed at night. Sleepovers. Sitting next to friends in the cafeteria. A first kiss. Having someone to dance with at Prom. Even though I understood why I didn’t have those things, I’d never allowed myself to realize how much I’d wanted them. It would’ve been too painful to allow myself to think about. I really wish I could’ve been hugged more.
After high school, I went off to college to pursue a four-year degree in web design. My college years were peaceful. Lonely still, but I was out on my own and that helped a lot. It’s easier to forget about how isolated you are when you don’t have to live with people who choose to avoid you. I even went to a party, if you can believe it. This one guy who I thought was kinda cute even approached me, offering me a red cup full of jungle-juice. I took it reluctantly, smiling shyly at him. He stood next to me for all of about twenty seconds, said “Anyway, it was nice talking to you.” and hurried off. I set the cup down, too dejected to enjoy it. I’d find out a few days later that he had been expelled and criminally charged for roofie’ing some poor girl and taking advantage of her.
Out of college, I had trouble finding work. It felt like everyone in my generation had been encouraged to go into IT as a career. By the time I had my degree, the field was overcrowded, save for inconsistent freelance jobs that rarely offered what they were worth. I got a job as a sales associate at a local branch of a big-chain retail company; just to pad my finances as I took the odd-jobs I could and tried to make something of my degree. Eventually, years passed with diminishing returns, and I inevitably stopped searching for opportunities to put my degree to use. I took on $50,000 worth of college debt, to become a retail associate. I had no friends, my attempts at a dating life had all fallen through as nobody could physically stand to be around me. At least customers left me alone; approaching me to ask a question, before stopping, then going to find a different employee. It allowed me to work in silence.
When I was about 27, we got a new girl on my team. She’d just turned 18 and this was her first job. At this point, I’d been at the store for about five years and was thoroughly familiar with the bullshit that came standard with the industry. I’d seen how customers would often mistreat employees and many of the managers would denigrate the associates beneath their reach in acts of petty power; showing off to corporate how well they could exercise control over us. Feeling sympathetic for the new girl not knowing anyone, I quietly made it a personal undertaking of mine to watch over her. Make sure nobody gave her shit or fucked with her. I’d keep tabs on where she was assigned for the day on the schedule and would find reasons to walk by her position to try getting a read on how she was doing from a distance. I learned her name was Aaliyah, and even though I’d never spoken to her, I found myself emotionally becoming fiercely protective of her. I think I just wanted to feel contact with someone so badly, I formed a parasocial relationship with a coworker. Looking back I know it was unhealthy, but I’d taken it upon myself as my responsibility to ensure her wellbeing.
For the first three-ish, months of Aaliyah’s employment there, we never so much as spoke to each other. It didn’t take her too long to make friends with several other of our coworkers and I started worrying about her less. She had actual friends she could rely on if she needed anything. I also had less time to concern myself with her whereabouts anyway, because it was at this time my team got a new coach: Joshua Oleander.
Coach Oleander was, in seemingly all respects, a normal enough man. 34, with thinning dark hair, square glasses, a strong heavy frame with broad shoulders and thick forearms. Not that this will likely add much additional description to you, but his soul was about the size of a grape. I would become intimately aware of its exact dimensions in the months following his hiring, as he was one of the only two people I’ve ever met who could stand to be around me.
Periodically, Coach Oleander would repeatedly confront me throughout the workday; something all my previous team-leads and coaches would look for any reason to avoid doing. He had no problem walking right up to me, standing well within range of my soul, and demanding a complete rundown on what I was doing and everything I had accomplished since he had last spoken to me. This was something he did with everyone under his lead and even though he would try to present himself as friendly and ‘simply checking in’, there was an unspoken understanding that he was doing it as an intimidation tactic. Behind his frequent requests for progress updates, there was a thinly veiled threat that he was looking for any reason he could find to write someone up and have them coached if we didn’t exceed his standards. This practically doubled my workload throughout the day, as now I needed to do everything I’d already been doing, plus extra, to keep him satisfied and not breathing right down my neck.
I got three reprieves throughout the day: Two fifteen-minute paid breaks and a one-hour unpaid lunch. I basically started spending all three napping with my head down on one of the folding plastic tables in the employee lounge. I was exhausted, more mentally than physically. The added responsibility, plus worry about whether I was doing enough so as not to invoke Coach Oleander’s ire, was putting a lot of stress on me while I was at my job. Only while in my apartment, was I able to relax.
One day, while I was resting on my break, head down on the table in my arms, I felt someone pass into the range of my soul. I expected them to hesitantly move on like they normally would, but instead they lingered. I heard a metal chair scraping on linoleum, and their soul lowered as they sat down. Slowly, groggy and with five minutes still left on my last fifteen of the day, I looked up to see who it was, only to find none other than Aaliyah sitting a few feet away from me; staring intently at the break room TV.
She turned and shot me a glance, looked back at the screen briefly, then once more back to me with a smile. “Sorry. You don’t mind if I sit here, do you?”
I blinked a few times, rubbing my eyes. Her soul was the size of a gravel pebble, the kind used on unpaved roads. “Don’t you mind?”
She looked confused.
“Sitting next to me? I mean?”
“No. Why would I?” She suddenly seemed very self-conscious. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to wake you up!” She said, sliding her chair back and leaning forward to stand.
“No!” I probably sounded desperate. “No, it’s okay! I’m just not used to people sitting next to me is all. Or talking.”
“Oh… Well, I’m Aaliyah.” She said.
I knew, of course, but pretended like I was just finding out. “Hi. I’m Chloe.”
“It’s nice to meet you! I’ve seen you around the store for a few months, but’ve never really gotten a chance to talk to you yet.”
“Same. Same.”
We both watched the TV playing re-runs of Deal or No Deal. It was always on in the breakroom. The show absolutely pissed me off to watch because I would’ve absolutely taken the first offer made to me every time that was anywhere over $50,000. In that moment however, the show wasn’t really what was on my mind. I was trying to think of something else to say to keep the conversation flowing, when my phone alarm started going off. My break was over.
“I’ve gotta get back to work.” I said, standing up and pulling on my work vest.
“Okay. See you around…”
“Chloe.”
“Chloe. Sorry! I’m bad with names!”
“It’s alright.”
As I turned to walk away, she said something else that caught me off guard.
“I don’t know why people wouldn’t talk to you all that much, something about you is kinda comforting.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Kinda like a space heater. You’re like a warm spot in the room.”
The rest of my shift, my head was in the clouds. I didn’t even really mind when Coach Oleander chewed me out for not zoning all the aisles he had assigned to me before the end of the day. Looking back, this was the catalyst that led to things playing out the way they did.
Aaliyah and I worked together two more times that week. The very next day, and two days after that. Both days when I was on my breaks, she would come in and sit next to me so we could talk for a bit. The first time it happened I thought it was a coincidence. After the second and third times, I realized she was deliberately waiting for me to go on my breaks before she would take hers. We started growing closer and at the end of our third shift where we talked that week, we exchanged Insta’s. Every once in awhile while off work then, one of us would send the other some new stupid meme we’d seen.
For the time, things felt like they were looking up for me. Yeah, I still worked a shitty job I hated where I was barely scraping by on rent, groceries and college payments. I didn’t mind though, because for the first time ever, I’d found a friend I could connect with who wasn’t bothered by being around me. Sure, I’d had internet friends before on Discord and Twitter, but never anyone I felt that close with or could hang out with in person. The age gap between me and Aaliyah was almost ten years exactly so we weren’t ever going to do something outside of work, but while there we got along great together, talked about life, gossiped about coworkers and complained about our team-leads and coaches. We had each other’s backs, and she knew if she had any issues with anyone, she need only let me know.
She did, as a matter of fact. One shift, about two months after our friendship really started, she came to me shaken up and on the verge of tears. Some customers, two older men in their fifties (one with a soul the size of a of a pea) had come into the aisle she had been working in and said some degrading and misogynistic shit to her. She told me, on the verge of tears how one had asked her for help finding something she didn’t know the location of and the other started making comments about her chest when she didn’t know how to help them. I won’t repeat exactly what she told me they said, but it was several things between the two of them and I was absolutely fucking livid.
I stormed over into the aisle she had been working in, right up to the two men; both of whom seemed bemused by my approach at first until my soul collided with theirs. The nausea hit them almost instantly as they were sensationally hooked up to their surroundings, and they could feel the fury radiating off me into them. Even still, the one with the pea-soul managed to get out “Uh-oh, she brought back up.” In a dismissive tone.
“Excuse me gentlemen.” I said, my voice was ice. “My coworker told me you said some inappropriate things to her?”
“Are you a manager?” The one with the normal soul asked.
“No. Did you say something inappropriate to a minor?” Of course, Aaliyah wasn’t a minor, but she looked young enough and I wanted to see if they’d show any remorse or repulsion towards their actions if they believed the person they were harassing was underage.
Instead, he simply responded: “If you’re not a manager, leave us alone.” The other one took a few steps away from me and I closed the distance. The effects of standing so close to me were really starting to affect him.
“I don’t think we need to bring a manager into this. I think you two can settle this with me like men.”
At this jab, the one with the pea-soul snapped. “Lady, fuck off and leave us alone, before we make you get a manager!”
The rage that had been burning in my heart reached a peak, before igniting into a cold flame that chilled my blood. “Aaliyah, get back.” I said. She hesitated. I could feel her soul, still a few feet behind me. “NOW.” I said forcefully, and she complied. When she was out of the range of what I could feel, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cigarette lighter, took two steps towards the men for good measure, and flicked it alight.
The full sensation of the burn rushed through my soul and into both of theirs. To me it was nothing I hadn’t felt ten thousand times before in my life, every time I stood next to a candle or lit up a smoke. To them, it was the most sudden and intensely overwhelming sensation of their lives. The one with the pea-soul immediately fell to the floor in a violent seizure, mouth frothing down the side of his face and into his hair. The other one screamed and covered his ears before scratching at the side of his head, bent over and emptied the contents of his stomach onto the floor. I stood over them both, lighter in hand, forcing them to feel it for several long, grueling seconds before I finally clicked it off.
“I’m sorry gentlemen! Allow me to get a manager for you!” I feigned concern before turning and marching out of the aisle past Aaliyah, who stood there shocked. She had no idea what I had just done to them on her behalf. No, that’s not true. It was on my behalf. She was a very sweet girl and never would have wished that on anyone, even her harassers. I take full responsibility for that.
I didn’t at the time, of course. I told the store manager we had a medical emergency in one of the aisles and led her back to the men. She put a call-out over the radio to call an ambulance for them, and both men were taken out on stretchers. I’ll be so honest right now, I felt really bad for Vic, the maintenance guy, having to clean up all that vomit. I don’t regret doing what I did, but I still feel bad that he had to clean it up. Vic, if you ever read this and I’m somehow not dead or in prison for what I’m about to do, I owe you a favor.
The next day, I was called into the security office, where the store manager and Coach Oleander were waiting for me. They had me take a seat, before pulling up the footage of my confrontation with the men from the day before. The video didn’t have audio, but they could see Aaliyah take a few steps back, before I pulled out my lighter, flicked it on and both men dropped.
Immediately Coach Oleander went on a rant about how I was going to get us sued for what I did to them, to which I replied that I hadn’t done anything. The store manager asked me to explain what had happened, and I told her all about what they had said to Aaliyah. I told her I was intervening on her behalf and had been trying to resolve things amicably. One of the men had started shouting at me and I had started fidgeting with my lighter; a nervous habit formed from years of smoking. Then, for some reason, one man collapsed, and the other started puking and it was just so shocking and unexpected I froze, before regaining the sense of mind to run for help.
The store manager leaned back in her chair, rubbing her chin consideringly. As far as she could tell, I hadn’t done anything wrong, even if she was visibly nauseous and uncomfortable from being so close to me… A discomfort Coach Oleander noticeably didn’t share. Eventually, she told me I was wrong for having gone to confront the customers on my own and that company policy clearly stated I should’ve known to seek out a team-lead or coach to deal with it. I was getting a write-up, and Coach Oleander was going to have to check in with me more frequently.
I left the security office feeling relieved. All things considered, I had gotten off very light, for doing something that, for all I’d known, could’ve killed two people. Granted, the world wouldn’t have lost anything if they had died, but still… In that moment, I felt lucky.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Coach Oleander started finding reasons to heckle me throughout the day. He’d find ‘imperfections’ on the shelves I’d organized, before making me do them all over again. During team meetings, he’d make a show of individually praising the work of everyone else beneath him, except for me. He’d start making offhand remarks in passing when I messed something up, calling me a ‘dumbass’ or telling me to ‘Get (my) shit together!’. I raised my concern about this to the store manager, who had me write an incident report and told me she’d follow through on discussing it with him. Nothing ever came of it. In retrospect, these should’ve been the first serious red-flags that I wasn’t safe there, but I was struggling to make rent and still deep in student loans. I tolerated it, but only, I told myself, until I could find somewhere else to work that would match my pay. Unfortunately, I made $2.00 over the minimum wage and not a lot of positions I was qualified for were willing to meet me there; much less places that were even hiring.
I would rant about my frustrations with how management was treating me to Aaliyah through texts and voice memos after work. She was sympathetic and always willing to lend me an eager ear, but there wasn’t anything she could really do. Just having someone to vent to was cathartic, but it didn’t alleviate the stress I felt at work that had already been mounting before then. Not only that, but Aaliyah had become more apprehensive around me since the incident with the two men. She had been there and knew for certain I had done something to them but had no idea what that might’ve been. I didn’t know how to go about explaining it to her, it’s already taken me this long to explain it to you. Plus, I didn’t know what she’d think of me if she knew what I was capable of. I’d decided it was best to just keep it to myself
One day, while at work, I was stocking as per usual, in the condiment’s aisle. Coach Oleander came up behind me while I was on the ladder of the stocking cart, one ear bud in, listening to music as everyone did while working there.
“Chloe. How’s it coming along?” He spoke unexpectedly, a hostile tone to his voice that made me jump; clutch the railing of the cart with one hand and accidentally knock a jar of pickles off the shelf with the other. My heart dropped through my guts as I watched the jar fall, and I tensed up as my soul felt it explode on the ground in a spray of glass and juice that speckled the floor.
“I’m so sorry, Coach! I- I didn’t hear you come up behind me!” My heart was racing from the adrenaline rush of the whole situation.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have an AirPod in while you work.” He said, as if he hadn’t knowingly come right up behind me and startled me on purpose. I could feel the glee in his soul and he could feel the panic in mine. I knew. He knew I knew. He also knew I knew there was nothing I could say to him about it.
“Yes Coach…”
“Take it out.”
“What?”
“You said ‘yes Coach’. Take the AirPod out of your ear.”
I didn’t object or point out the hypocrisy of everyone else being allowed to have one in. Silently, I complied.
Oleander was studying me like he’d had some sort of realization. It was like something in his head had clicked, and he finally understood the context of what everyone experienced while standing close to me. He grinned. “Good.” He looked down and nudged the broken glass and juice and pickle spears with his shoe. “Don’t you think you should clean this up?”
“Y- Yes Coach…” I said, stepping down off the stocking cart and making for where we kept the brooms and bags of spill absorbent powder in the back.
“I’ll stand by this mess until you get back.”
As I cleaned it up, I could feel his eyes on the back of my head, unblinking. Every time I moved out of the range of his soul, he would step back into the boundaries of mine. He reminded me of an animal stalking its prey and I could feel his enjoyment of my anxiety being reflected back at him. I avoided him for the rest of my shift, refusing to be near him if somebody else wasn’t around.
“Are you okay?” Aaliyah asked me a day later during our lunch break. “You seem upset by something.”
“I’m fine…”
“You haven’t touched your ramen at all. That’s not like you.”
I looked down at my Styrofoam cup of instant noodles and stirred them with the plastic fork disinterestedly. “I guess I just haven’t felt great recently.” I knew Aaliyah could feel that something was troubling me deeply. I could feel her concern.
“Okay… Let me know if you need anything?”
“I will.”
Nothing serious of note happened again until a few days later. It was early in the morning at the start of my shift, when Coach Oleander came into my aisle and walked up to me, holding two coffee cups.
“Good morning, Chloe!” He said, offering one out to me. I eyed it with great caution, able to sense the boiling liquid within.
“Good morning, Coach… I’m sorry, I’m not feeling well this morning.”
“Well, maybe this’ll help perk you up?”
“I don’t really like caffeine. I’m sorry.”
“No. Don’t apologize. It’s good.” He said, but I could see the anger veiled behind his eyes. “I trust you’ll be able to work fast without it then?”
“Yes Coach.”
“Good.” Just as he was walking away from me, he crushed the paper cup meant for me. The boiling coffee gushed out and spilled over his left hand; instantly turning the flesh a dark shade of red and causing blisters to bubble and pop wherever it ran.
I inhaled sharply and grabbed the back of my left hand, rubbing it aggressively and leaning as far back from him as I could. It wasn’t enough.
“Ow! Damn! My bad!” Coach Oleander exclaimed, not at all sounding like he was bothered by the pain. “I’m sorry! I accidentally made a mess next to where you were working!”
I could still feel the sting of sizzling dermis peeling away from the back of his hand. I blinked back tears, stepped down off my cart and walked to the other side of the aisle.
“Chloe? Where are you going? Your cart’s right here!” I did my best to pay him no mind. He walked right past me and the dull, aching sensation returned to my hand as he did so. “Don’t worry! I made the mess, I’ll clean it up. Be right back!”
If the pickle jar was the moment when the seeds of cruelty were planted in his head, the coffee was the first moment where they truly began to bear fruit. I was never quite able to tell if Coach Oleander was motivated by sadism towards me, selfish masochism towards himself, or some combination of the two. Whatever the reason, from then on, once every two or three days, harm would ‘unluckily’ befall him in my presence: forcing his suffering through me and magnifying it back onto him. Once he opened a box with his razor, and the blade ‘slipped’ and cut right through the webbing between the base of his middle and index fingers. Another time, after I had just finished unloading the pallets from the day’s truck, he walked up beside me and gripped his right fist closed into a sewing needle, piercing nearly all-the-way through his palm. I started becoming emotionally despondent while at work, dissociating as soon as I walked through the front door every morning.
Aaliyah texted me less and less, asking me what was going on and why I always seemed so worn out at work. I didn’t give her an answer. I didn’t really have one that would’ve made sense. She stopped going out of her way to line up her breaks with mine, and I went back to sleeping through them again. Attempting to, at least. Once, while my head was down in my arms, I could feel Coach Oleander’s soul come up behind me and just stand there. My heart started racing and I felt like I was on the verge of a panic attack. He stood there for close to a minute, soaking in my growing anxiety, before finally walking away. Even on my breaks, I wasn’t safe.
I tripled down on trying to find a new place of employment. Anywhere that would take me as quickly as possible. I wish I could say I gave it my best effort; I can say it was the best effort I had in me to give. Most of my days off were spent emotionally recovering. I felt sick a lot. I was always tired, no matter how much I slept. I felt hopeless about my current situation and always terrified in the knowledge that I would have to inevitably return to it again the next day. The fear I felt was omnipresent.
I struggled through this for about a month, before something different happened. Coach Oleander called a team meeting early one morning, did his usual round of thanking everyone else for all the work they had done. This time, however, he ended it off by thanking me for ‘being a good team player’. Everyone’s clapping and his sickening smile felt like salt being rubbed in the wound. Before he dismissed everyone back to work, he told us he would be running to the pet store during our lunch today to get roaches for his bearded dragon, and that we shouldn’t expect to get ahold of him for about an hour if we needed anything.
The day had been going well. At least, better than most. Oleander didn’t really bother me all that much, only once stopped at the end of my aisle to ask me how things were coming along. I told him “Great.” With as much confidence and enthusiasm as I could muster. He simply gave me a thumbs up and kept moving on.
Aaliyah hadn’t been scheduled that day and I’d felt bad about being so distant. I decided to sit out in front of the building during my lunch and call her, just to see how she was doing. The late spring was turning into a beautiful early summer, with lush trees blowing in the cool Virginian breeze; casting harsh shadows in the light of the sun that bloomed in the sky like a dandelion. Out front, I ate my ramen and laughed on the phone with her as she told me about the colleges she was applying to and how her parents were obsessed with their fear that she would end up going to a ‘party school’. About three-fourths of the way through my lunch, Coach Oleander passed me on his way back into the building. I couldn’t help but notice he was carrying a box-shaped bag with the Petco logo on the side.
Our store was doing inventory at the time. As someone who had been there for the last five years, the management team entrusted me with handling the on-hand count in the technology closet where we kept the extra computers, tablets, phones, etc. Obviously, this was one of those areas that only Coaches and the Store Manager herself had access to on a regular basis, because it was a high risk for theft. I had to be let in by one of the coaches, who gave me a TC and had me get to work.
It was pretty easy, if not monotonous. All I had to do was scan every single UPC in the room once so there would be an accurate count in our system of exactly how many of each item there was inside. The space itself was just a bit bigger than my apartment bathroom, but all the walls were lined with shelves, each packed with hundreds of boxes; each box I had to not only scan, but make sure I only scanned once. I put on a podcast and fell into a routine of starting at the top of one section, slowly scanning my way down to the bottom, and moving on to the next.
When I was about halfway done… you guessed it. My blood went cold as I felt Coach Oleander’s soul block the way out behind me. I kept my back to him, kept scanning and hoped he would just leave me alone.
“Hey Chloe. How’s it going?” He asked.
“Good.” I said meekly, wanting him to please just go away and let me work.
“That’s good. That’s real good…” His breathing was heavy and I could sense his heartrate was going wild. Whatever he was about to do, it was something he hadn’t done before. “I need you to be extra thorough today. Understand?”
I nodded.
“Do you understand, Chloe?”
“Yes Coach…”
At this, he stepped fully into the closet with me. I started to panic as he closed the distance and I quickly realizing he’d brought something else with him that I, in my shaking anxiety, had overlooked before. There was a second soul with him. A very small one…
I turned around now, staring dead into his eyes. They looked hollow. He was staring at me, but in that moment, I wouldn’t have guessed there was anything at all behind them if I hadn’t been able to feel it for myself.
“You’re doing great, Chloe.”
“W- What are you doing?” I asked, voice shaking.
“I’m just checking in with one of my associates.” He said, his hand reaching into his coat pocket and wrapping loosely around the hamster he had within. “Is that not allowed?”
“Please don’t…”
“Don’t what?” His fingers began to tighten into a grip. I felt the hamster squirm and struggle.
“Stop it!”
“Chloe, keep your voice down! You’re freaking me out!” He said, fist completely balled around the poor rodent. I felt its teeth sink into his flesh and the flavor of his blood filling its mouth. I felt its little bones snap and its organs collapse as he crushed it to death. I felt its final few seconds as it clung to a life that I also felt fade from its body. I experienced everything the hamster did, and I wanted to scream.
Tears ran down my cheeks and I felt like I was broken. Coach Oleander basked in the experience before turning and walking towards the door.
“Get back to work.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the lighter. I took a step towards him and flicked it on, hoping to anything above that I could kill him with a seizure right then and there. Instead, he stopped, soaked in the feeling of the flame, turned around with a friendly smile, and said: “No smoking indoors.”
I spent the next twenty minutes in the bathroom, crying and trying to hold myself together. I felt horrible, gross and afraid. I managed to compose myself somehow, tracked down the store manager upfront near the registers, and told her I was going home. When she asked if I was okay, I told her no and that I was running a fever. She said she hoped I got better soon, and I clocked out.
At home, I spent the rest of the next two days straight laying on my back and staring at the ceiling. I forced myself to eat enough to keep my strength from fading completely, but all willpower to do anything had been taken from me. At the end of the second day, I got a text from Aaliyah.
<Heeeey! :3 I’m worried about you. Call when you get a chance.>
I responded: <Will call later. At 6:00.> I didn’t. I fell asleep around 4:00, then slept until the next morning. When I checked my phone, she’d texted me once at 9:30 to say goodnight. I felt awful.
I started blowing through my accrued sick time, not mentally able to handle going into my job anymore. Overall, I had about 2 weeks’ worth of PPTO acquired, which flew by far too fast for me to even begin to feel like I had mentally recovered from the incident in the technology closet. With every passing day, every passing hour, I felt more and more distressed in the dreadful anticipation of when I would run out of sick time and would have to return to work.
Aaliyah stopped responding to me altogether after I fell asleep on her without calling. After that night, she would get my messages but started leaving me on read. It didn’t matter how much I apologized, she didn’t respond. At one point, the three dots popped up for a few seconds to indicate she was typing something, but it quickly vanished without anything having been sent. I tried calling her twice, ready to explain EVERYTHING I’ve already explained so far up to this point. I didn’t care if it sounded insane, I just needed someone to confide in about what had been happening at work. Still, no luck. The calls rang ‘til they timed out.
The day before I knew I would have to return to work, I felt like puking from the second I awoke to the second I managed to somehow fall asleep. My apartment had devolved into a mess, and I had become a recluse; not even leaving my place to purchase groceries. I was living on leftovers, portioned out to last for as long as possible. On my final day, I ate a pitifully small amount of food that, altogether combined, maybe would’ve been enough to constitute one meal. It’s not like I was doing anything to actively burn calories, but you’d really be surprised how much worrying constantly can absolutely famish you.
Returning to work, it was a mostly quiet day. The store manager herself asked me if I was doing better since we’d last spoken. I wanted so badly to try explaining to her everything that had been happening to me at the hands of one of her coaches. I told her I was doing better. Coach Oleander wasn’t there that day, but neither was Aaliyah. I shot her a text on my final break.
<Miss you.>
It was left on read.
When I clocked out, I went to the sporting goods section and bought a folding pocketknife, as well as a keychain canister of pepper spray. I also took a cart around the store and completely restocked up on food. That night, as a reward to myself for getting through the day, I made a big dinner of fried salmon in a lemon marinade with peppered asparagus. I ate on my couch, dazed out in front of the TV with some Anime on, and tried to make myself believe the worst was behind me. I couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t be victimized again, but I could at least feel assured of my ability to defend myself if I needed to. Or, at least, I could feel assured of my willingness to fight back. The knowledge that I was being proactive in protecting myself brought me comfort. I was retaking control in my life.
The very next day, coach Oleander was back. I kept a very harsh, firm distance from him, making direct eye contact with him whenever we passed or were working in the same area. The truth was, I didn’t feel strong or tough; I just wanted him to know I didn’t feel weak. He seemed unphased by this.
“Good morning, Chloe! How was your vacation?”
“Better than being here.”
He grinned. “Surely, you don’t mean that?”
“Just keep your distance from me today and going forward.”
He cocked his head, curiously. “I don’t-”
“Just dop it and stay away. If you have anything to tell me, keep a good few feet away from me while you do so. Understand?”
“I don’t understand why you’re being so defensive.” He said, scratching the side of his head. His hands were torn up, blistered and scarred from how he’d been torturing himself around me.
“I just don’t like people coming into my personal space. Past trauma. You can respect that, right?” I gripped the pepper-spray in my pocket.
“Hmmm sure, Chloe. Anything you say. Now get back to work.”
Aaliyah wasn’t there that day either. In fact, she wasn’t even on the schedule anymore. At lunch, I opened the store app on my phone and scrolled through the list of employee names to see if she was supposed to be in, and her name wasn’t anywhere to be found. The last names were all in alphabetical order, so hers should’ve been easy to locate.
<Hey Aaliyah! Did you quit? I’m really worried about you. I haven’t seen you in a while. You’ve been leaving my messages on read. Would you like me to stop messaging you? I can leave you alone if you prefer. I’m sorry. I hope I’m not being pushy.>
Coach Oleander entered the break room, whistling to himself. He immediately put two spoonsful of instant coffee in a Styrofoam cup and started pouring hot water into it before mixing it around. He was the only other person in there with me and I immediately went on edge when I saw him.
<I have something to tell you about Coach Oleander if you’d like to hear. I want to fill you in on what’s been going on with me. Miss you.>
I hit send.
Coach Oleander’s pocket vibrated.
My attention snapped over to him immediately. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up on alert, but I tried to convince myself it was just a coincidence. I swallowed back bile and sent a second, shorter text.
<Test>
His pocket vibrated again.
<Test>
His pocket vibrated again.
I got up and approached him slowly. Coach Oleander turned around and smiled at me. “Chloe! I thought you said not to get too close to you?” He hissed the last few words like a snake.
I could feel my lip quivering. “Aaliyah.” I managed to choke out. It was an accusation.
Coach Oleander didn’t say anything. Didn’t move. His smile remained and he calmly stirred his coffee.
I crept my soul into contact with his, immediately wishing I hadn’t. Radiating off him was this feeling of malicious rage. Violent feelings. Hate. Lust. The sensation of warm beef being ripped apart with bare fingers. Screaming. That imageless dream you get when you’re sleeping, and you suddenly feel like your body is freefalling. The floor bubbled up smears of blood that splattered the walls of his home and I knew. I knew.
I shook my head, backing away from him. “No!” I was holding back sobs.
He stepped towards me. “Chloe, you seem pale, are you alright?”
“Stay back!” I screamed, hoping somebody would hear and intervene. He lunged forward, placing one hand over my mouth and the other tight around my throat. He closed his eyes, composed himself, allowed his hands to fall to my shoulders and whispered. “Shhhhh… It’s okay. You seem sick. Why don’t you go home for the night? I won’t be here tomorrow, but I trust you’ll know what’s expected of you. And don’t worry about this affecting your attendance. I’ll take care of it.”
I stared into his rotten eyes, the color of roadkill baking on a hot day. Could smell his putrid breath that passed by yellowed teeth. Could feel his soul, textured and indulging. It didn’t feel like any other human soul I had ever felt before, not even his own from days past.
I shot past him, walking straight to the front entrance and out to my car. I didn’t even bother to clock out as I left. The entire drive home, I was fighting back the emotional release I knew was coming and that threatened to boil over at any given point. I don’t know how I managed to make it through my apartment door before the dam broke, and I was crying curled up on the floor. Aaliyah was gone. I knew what happened to her. I didn’t know where she was now, but I knew where it had occurred. I blamed myself; I still do. I promised myself when she first started working there that I would protect her, and I hadn’t. I had failed. It happened when I was away from work. I’d left her in a wolf’s den by herself. I thought back to that night, when I promised her I’d call before falling asleep shortly after. I wished I’d stayed awake. I wished I’d told her everything then. I wished I’d warned her about him.
Before I cried myself to sleep, I got a message from Aaliyah’s account.
<I’d love to hear what you have to say about Coach Oleander! Tell me all about him. :3>
The next day, I was a zombie at work. Going through the motions, completely dead inside. I made it through my first break, then my lunch, both without feeling or thinking anything. When I had about three hours left on my shift, I stopped in the aisle I was working in and rubbed my eyes hard. I found myself staring up at the metal roof paneling above and glancing down the long, featureless rows of products, wondering to myself what the point of even coming into work was anymore. What did it matter if I didn’t make my bills? What did it matter if I gave up altogether and starved? Why would that be any less preferable to what my life had become?
I spent those final three hours thinking to myself about giving up on life and how much I wanted to. I wanted to abandon all responsibility and remove myself from a world that seemingly had nothing but cruelty to offer me, but ultimately, I decided against doing so. I said at the start of this recounting that I do believe the average leanings of human nature are towards compassion, and I mean that. If I choose to expend the remaining duration of my life, that is my prerogative; but I will not abandon the world in doing so. I will leave it a better place for all of you, even if that means dragging a monster to my grave with me. He will never hurt an Aaliyah again.
I made it through my shift without quitting somehow. I knew I didn’t have much longer, just had to make it back to work one more time to begin enacting my scheme.
I didn’t sleep most of the night, mulling over the fine details of how exactly I was going to do what I was thinking. By the time the sun rose, I’d barely slept a wink, but it didn’t matter. My heart was pounding in my chest, and I could feel my blood pumping through my fingertips. Plus, I knew I wasn’t going in for a full shift anyway. This would be my last day there ever.
I left for work a few minutes earlier than I normally do, took the complete twenty-minute drive in dead silence with nothing but the growl of the engine and my own thoughts to keep me company. Was I ready for what I knew was coming next? Not really. It didn’t matter. I was committed, regardless of how unprepared I felt. The plan wasn’t complicated… yet. That would come later.
I got in to work, grabbed my cart, and went straight to my first assigned aisle. I needed to make it through the first two-ish hours of the day, to keep what I was going to request from sounding overtly suspicious. No problem. I didn’t put on a podcast like I normally would’ve because I didn’t want to lose concentration on what was coming; lest the gumption to do it escape me. Coach Oleander passed me with a smile. “Good morning, Chloe!”
I forced a smile back. “Good morning, Coach.”
I made it to my first fifteen-minute break. It would be my final there ever. I spent the whole time tapping my foot anxiously, elbows on one of the tables and my head in my hands. No matter how much I tried to focus my breathing, I couldn’t seem to manage. I realized that even though I was wearing deodorant, I was sweating through my clothes; but I wasn’t sure how much of that was the adrenaline hyping me up, versus my not having slept the night before. Both were almost certainly playing their own parts.
When my break was over, I stood up, took a deep breath, and set out to find Coach Oleander. I was ready. No, I wasn’t, but I had to be. I kept clutching my fists into alternating balls left-right-left-right-left- over and over again, trying to forcibly give myself something else to focus on as a distraction. I had to play this off as naturally as I could manage.
I approached Coach Oleander cautiously. He had to think two things for my plan to work: Firstly, he had to think I was afraid of him but that whatever I was dealing with was severe enough that I was resorting to him for assistance with a personal issue. Secondly, he had to feel enticed with the prospect of potentially gaining new information about me he could further hurt me with. If I could convince him of those two things than maybe… just maybe…
“Coach Oleander?” I asked him on the sales floor.
“Yes, Chloe?”
“I’m-” I looked down at the floor, hoping with everything in me that I was a better liar than I knew I was. “I’m really sorry… Can I borrow your phone for a second? Mine’s on low charge and I really need to call my sister. Our mother’s in the hospital and… It’s urgent.” I looked up at him, as doe eyed as I could manage, trying to get a feel for him. Thankfully, I really was absolutely scared of what I was about to do, and he could feel my fear through my soul. He felt my fear and incorrectly assessed it as being intimidated by him.
“Of course!” He said, immediately pulling his phone out of his pocket. He’d bought it. Never mind that I’m an only child, he actually thought I was dumb enough to call my sister with his phone and let him find out her number. I could feel my previously dry mouth absolutely salivating when he handed his phone over to me, pin-pad on. “You can call her right here.”
“Okay! Just let me check her number quickly, since I don’t know it off the top of my head.” I pulled out my phone and opened Instagram. This was the most important part: My plan wouldn’t work if he had a second phone on him and I had to make sure Aaliyah’s was somewhere else. “I hope my battery holds out long enough for me to check…”
I sent Aaliyah a message. <I quit.> His pocket didn’t vibrate. I felt an unwilling smile wash over my face as I threw his phone into the cement floor before stomping on it with all my might.
“What the fuck are you doing!?” He screamed at me. I stomped again, then again. Over and over, bits of glass and even plastic from the casing flying in all directions. I only stopped once his fist collided with the side of my head, knocking me backwards. It didn’t matter, I’d achieved what I’d needed to.
I scrambled to my feet and immediately started speed-walking towards the door. I could hear him say from somewhere behind me over his radio “Yes, I have a situation back…”. I didn’t care. I made it out the front of the building, took off my vest, and crossed the parking lot over to his truck. I silently prayed he didn’t somehow have another phone and wouldn’t be alerted to the AirTag I tossed in the bed, underneath some tarps.
I drove all the way home, crawled into bed, and slept for almost nine hours. When I woke up, It was 7:48 in the evening and I felt exhilarated. I opened my phone. ‘Aaliyah’ had seen my most recent text and left me on read. I opened the Find My app and checked on the status of the AirTag I’d thrown in the back of his truck. It was located in the driveway of a house, only seven-minutes away.
I got in my car and rode to the neighborhood, slowing down when I went past the pinged house. Sure enough, his truck was the lone vehicle in the driveway of a single-wide mobile home. I left, came back after nightfall and retrieved the tag from the back of his truck. I knew it wouldn’t be long before he got a new phone, if he hadn’t gotten one already. I didn’t want him to realize he’d been tracked.
That was three weeks ago. I’ve spent a lot of time watching him, learning his habits intimately. There’s one predictable one that he seems to follow to a tee: Every Saturday he has off, so every Friday night he DoorDash’s fast food to his home. The driver always leaves it on his porch, and it always takes him a few minutes after they’ve left to bring it inside. That’s my ace in the hole, so to speak.
Did you know Rohypnol is sold over the counter in many pharmacies in Mexico? Legally it’s not supposed to be, but the enforcement of drug regulation in parts of the country is so lax that in many areas, it can be purchased as a ‘sleep-aid’. I didn’t have money or time to go to Mexico, but someone in one of my Discord servers was taking a vacation there with his family and I convinced him to smuggle a few of the pills back into the states for me. I told him I was dealing with insomnia and wanted to try a few of the ‘heavier’ treatment options I couldn’t get prescribed here, to see if they would be more helpful than Melatonin had been. When he got back, he sent me a postcard with a baggie and a few white pills. Perfect.
Tonight, when Coach Oleander orders food again, I’m going to drug his soda. Fucker’s getting a double dose; he’s a big guy and I’m not taking any risks. A few hours after his food is delivered, I’m going to enter his home with my pocketknife and put an end to his pathetic existence. I don’t believe there is any chance I have at getting away with this, which is why I’m writing it out. I want the full truth of my story to be known and remembered. If-and-when the police come for me, I’m going out my own way. I have not endured everything I have, just to rot in a prison cell.
I’ve spent a lot of time lately, wondering if there’s an afterlife of some kind for me to look forward to. One would think the existence of souls would mean ‘yes’, but I’m not really sure that souls continue existing anywhere onward once someone dies. Do we speculate to what heaven the candle’s flame ascends when it burns out? It seems to me that my soul, the entirety of my experience, is tied intrinsically to my mortal existence. Just because that experience isn’t limited within the sensations of my body like most people’s, doesn’t give me any extra reasoning to believe it will continue past the cessation of my life. I hope it does. Maybe there is a heaven, and I’ll get to see Aaliyah one last time before descending into hell for eternity with our abuser. If that turns out to be the case, I swear on every scrap of willpower in my being that I won’t be his victim when I get there: He’ll be mine.
It’s been a hell of a life. I wish I could’ve made it to 30. I didn’t have anything special planned, but it still would’ve been neat, I guess. To whoever’s reading this, I love you. Hold out through times of hardship, look out for the people around you and never tolerate poor treatment from others.
To Joshua Oleander, I am not afraid of you, nor the pathetic, damaged little soul inside your head. Meeting me was the worst thing that ever happened to you and harming my friend was the worst decision you ever made. When I am done absolutely annihilating your unconscious body beyond anything your own parents will recognize, I will tear your trailer apart until I find any hint as to what you might’ve done with Aaliyah.
I hope the roofie knocks you out fully and you’re completely unconscious when I come for you. I don’t want you to feel how much I’m going to enjoy this.
Ry Dandel Stories 